Greenspan's Dilemma

By
Claudia Rosett

Updated Dec. 12, 1997 12:01 am ET

Confused about the manic swings of today's global economy? You should be. Over the past 15 years or so, the mix of advancing technology and more open markets has wrought a revolution in world finance, trade and production. Even for experts supposed to be guiding us through all this, the complexities quickly turn baffling. Just ask Alan Greenspan, chairman of the Federal Reserve, whose job is to manage the U.S. money supply, and whose single most illuminating remark in recent times may well have been that, "in the current state of our knowledge, money demand has become too difficult to predict."